The Village 

Dir. M. Night Shyamalan. 2004, 108 mins. 35mm. With Bryce Dallas Howard, Joaquin Phoenix, Sigourney Weaver, William Hurt, Adrien Brody. Following the enormous success of his breakthroughs The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs, Shyamalan made his most conceptually complex, intricately patterned film with The Village, a Bush-era political allegory that also evokes the literature of Hawthorne and Irving in its deeply American fears of the unknown. Extraordinarily shot by Roger Deakins, Shyamalan’s eerie, visually sumptuous film is set in a restrictive, nineteenth-century Pennsylvania village, where a generation of elders keeps their younger flock in a constant state of panic over monsters that stalk their borders: ”Those We Don’t Speak Of…” Howard and Phoenix beautifully play Ivy and Lucius, a tentative young couple whose burgeoning curiosity about the world begins to bring radical change to their village. “In his appropriation of a wide, almost timeless range of American custom, from religious conservatism to more secular folklore, the director creates a parallel history of the country’s foundations.” —Michael Koresky, Reverse Shot 

Preceded by Reverse Shot Talkie: George Romero 

Tickets: $15 / $11 senior and students / $9 youth (ages 3–17) / discounted for MoMI members ($7–$11). Order tickets. Please pick up tickets at the Museum’s admissions desk upon arrival. All seating is general admission. Review safety protocols before your visit.